


if you fall in love then your heart is gonna fall too

by mariewinter



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, and joan ferguson is a manipulative piece of shit who i love, karen's gay that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 02:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7203293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariewinter/pseuds/mariewinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaz has loved and stopped loving and started all over again, but she has always loved.</p>
<p>Or: Three people Kaz Proctor has been in love with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you fall in love then your heart is gonna fall too

**Author's Note:**

> or!!!!: AU where everyone is happy and not an asshole. maybe? nah, probably not. joan is still an asshole. but kaz ~loves~ her.
> 
> i think a lot about kaz/bea and kaz/allie and kaz/joan sometimes (read: all the time), so.
> 
> also if this season doesn't end with a) joan as top dog b) kaz as top dog or c) kaz, bea, allie and joan all making out with eachother for some reason, i'll be very upset.

**i.**

When Kaz first sees Bea Smith, she's certain that she's simultaneously the fiercest and most beautiful woman that she's ever seen in her entire life. Stupidly, she can't draw her eyes away from those red curls – can't draw her eyes away from high cheekbones and dark eyes and something in her aches. When she goes home that night, she thinks about Bea Smith when she slips her hand between her thighs.

(She's done it before, but this – this is different.

She's seen her in person this time, and that means something. It has to. She feels like it does.)

She wakes up the next morning, stretches, filling blissfully sated and – ridiculously, in the sunshine, she starts laughing. Like a girl, she turns her face into the pillow and giggles until she's breathless.

—

When she meets Bea for a second time, it's so much better than the first. Almost exactly how she'd imagined it – Bea _approving_ of what she's done, not saying _I don't ever want to see you here again_ but instead welcoming her. What you're doing is important, Bea says; what you're doing makes a difference. And Kaz doesn't need validation, she _knows_ that it's important, knows that it's the right thing to do, knows that it's righteous. She has never had a single sliver of doubt.

But to hear Bea say it – to hear her say the words, it's...gratifying, it's more than she's ever imagined. It feels like more than she's ever imagined. It makes something in her chest tighten like a vice is squeezing her heart and it makes her eyes sting.

You have no idea what that means to me, she says, and it's the truth, Bea doesn't. Bea doesn't know at all, no one has no idea how much she depends on things like this from certain people and Bea is one of those certain people, she always has been. Since –

Since forever, it feels like.

You inspired us, Kaz tells Bea, and she can't decipher the look on her idol's face.

—

Falling out of love with someone – falling out of love with Bea Smith – hurts. It is hurt and hate and wounded betrayal. It's the feeling one gets when one realizes that they've been used and thrown away, discarded like trash. 

But it's slow. 

And then, when she's arrested, she finally crashes to the ground, all of the bones in her fragile body shattered, as easily as one would snap a bird in half. And there's no love left anymore.

Falling out of love is more like being pushed.

**ii.**

There is a certain adoration that comes with loving Allie; a sort of fuzzy warmth in her stomach whenever she's around the younger woman, a fondness that cannot be erased by anything on this earth. She's her number one— she always has been, since the day they met. Perhaps neither of them had known it then, but they do now, and that bond is unbreakable. Permanent.

Kaz knows this better than the beat of her heart or the thrumming of her pulse; she knows it better than the back of her own hand, the blonde tints of her own hair, this is a feeling that only so many people get and only so many people know and understand. And she is lucky enough to be one of those people.

She saved Allie, yes, but this relationship is not one of obligation. Allie does not owe her a single thing; she says that time and time again but she knows that Allie sometimes doesn't believe it, will let a quiet _I owe you my life_ slip every now and again, offer up that familiar sheepish smile whenever Kaz gives her a disapproving look. Allie thinks that things must be owed; a favor given is a favor returned. Tit for tat. And yet only if it involves her being the one to owe someone.

She does things and she does not say _you owe me,_ but she lets other people do things and says _I owe you._ Kaz will never understand it, this selflessness, this gentle self-destruction. (Yes you do, a traitorous voice whispers in her head, yes you do). It is pure and soft and in Allie's presence she feels like she can do anything and be anything and want for everything because she will get it, and when she curls chastely against the younger woman at night, she feels nothing but affection.

Allie loves her; she's known this for so long. She loves Allie; she's known that for longer, since the beginning of time or at least what has felt like the beginning of time too many times to count, because she will sometimes think – maybe a little stupidly, but she can never bring herself to care that much – that her life hadn't truly started until she'd met Allie.

She'd saved Allie, yes, but somehow Allie had saved her, too, and Kaz hadn't even known she'd needed to be saved up until then.

Kaz has loved, and stopped loving, and started all over again, but she has never stopped loving Allie.

Not once.

**iii.**

Loving Joan is like drifting down a river heading straight for a waterfall without being aware that you're heading straight for a waterfall.

It's slow at first. Maybe you're not even aware of it, you're just floating along and watching the scenery, but then you're dropping, and the water is rushing up around you and it's engulfing you as you come closer and closer to the waterfall. And the drop – the drop is so long and so terrifying, and you have a sudden realization that you are about to live or die and there is no in between.

Granted, loving someone has never been as dramatic as that (yes it has been, yes it will be), but it certainly feels that dramatic when she's curled up against Joan, face pressed against her shoulder, trembling hands holding very still, cold hands. Joan is very still and cold, but when she's with Kaz she's – different, like something around her melts away.

(Bea Smith will tell her that Joan is manipulating her, days or weeks later, eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a thin line, and Kaz will snort dismissively and walk away. She doesn't linger on the idea for a second.)

Kaz has always loved wholeheartedly; she either does that or does not love at all. She loves or she hates, or she will love and hate all at once, but it is never halfhearted.

She does not hate Joan. She has never hated Joan, she does not think that she will ever hate Joan because she is _Joan,_ quiet and soft-spoken but devious and warm and she trails her fingertips absentmindedly through Kaz's hair at night whenever either of them need comfort. 

(They need comfort every night. It will be Joan with her nightmares or Kaz with hers, Joan with her memories or Kaz with hers, but they always, each and every night, sneak out of their cells and into each other's.)

She grows accustomed to the way Joan's hand fits in hers, the woman's fingers twined through the spaces between her own, their palms pressed together; knows what Joan smells like – clean, simple, like a hospital, with no sort of scented flowery shampoo or fruity body wash.; knows what Joan's hair feels like, soft and thin in her hands; knows what Joan's skin feels like; knows what it feels like to just be _around_ Joan, in the most comfortable sort of silence that she can imagine.

Kaz wakes with a start one night to the sound of her cell door creaking open; she doesn't tense, doesn't need to spare a single thought to who it is. She knows who it is. If it was Allie, she'd knock.

Joan never knocks.

“Did I wake you?” The woman's voice is quiet, just barely a murmur above the sound of the door shutting being carefully pressed shut behind her.

Kaz spends a moment adjusting, blinking, sight calibrating itself to the darkness in her cell, to the shadows clinging to the walls, stretching in gaping forms across the corners. The usual orange light flickers in from the window from the lights in the yard outside, and that's the only illumination they're spared. 

“No,” she lies, and they both know it's a lie, but none of them comment on it; she lifts the sheets aside, pulling the corner back, “Come on.”

Joan only ever visits her like this if she's had a nightmare.

The woman swallows, eyes her and then the space offered to her for a moment, and then crawls in obediently, form uncomfortably stiff against Kaz's. The bed is small enough that they have to squeeze against each other to fit, and while she's sure Joan would rather have it otherwise, there's not much to do about it but settle.

So. Kaz settles, keeps her hands to herself, lays her head back down onto the pillow, asks sleepily, “You want to talk about it?”

She knows the answer will be no. The answer is always no, and she understands that, but it's good to give Joan a choice. Talk about it if you want. Don't if you don't want. “No,” Joan says, predictably, and stays at the very edge of the bed.

“Goodnight,” Kaz whispers to the back of Joan's shoulder.

“Goodnight,” is the reply that comes, after a moment, softer and quieter, and then an even gentler albeit slightly awkward “Thank you.”

Kaz closes her eyes.

She's been here before; she swears she has.

But this feels different, somehow.

It feels complete.


End file.
